This report contains several data layers (or themes) that show bathymetric and sidescan sonar imagery of Rhode Island Sound. GeoTIFFs produced from grids of the NOAA sidescan sonar and bathymetric surveys are provided in geographic and universal transverse mercator projections, along with the bathymetry grids. Available vector data consists of polygon data layers that provide the coastline for the Rhode Island Sound GIS project area, interpretive data layers, and an outline of the study area.

Data layers are provided with geographic coordinates to allow the data to be integrated into a Geographic Information System (GIS). Data layers archived here do not require additional processing to be utilized within the Environmental Systems Research Institute's (ESRI) ArcView and ArcGIS software. This does not mean that a user will not wish to do additional processing, especially if utilizing a different GIS software package or spheroid, but that it is not necessary to do additional processing simply to utilize the data in its minimum archive format.

For those who do not have the ESRI software or a compatible GIS data browser available on their computer, a free viewer, ArcExplorer, is available from ESRI. The key functionality of ArcExplorer is the viewing of spatial data. The user will need to add the selected data layers by using ArcExplorer's add data button.

Each GIS data layer from this publication is cataloged below for easy access. The individual data layers are described below and include the GeoTIFF, grid, or shapefile name (e.g. h11321_45m_geo) which is linked to a browse graphic showing the data layer extent and coverage. Selecting the data layer name will result in the browse graphic being displayed in a separate browser window.

When accessing this report from the DVD-ROM, the top level of the report contains an ArcView project file (h11321.apr) created in ArcView 3.3 and an ESRI ArcMap document (h11321.mxd) created in ArcMap 9.2, but saved as an ArcMap 9.0/9.1 document to make it accessable in older versions.

Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata for the individual data layers is provided in HTML, FAQ html, and text versions. Selecting associated metadata files from the table below will open the information in a new browser window.

A 'zip' compressed, downloadable archive file containing the components of the ESRI shapefile for each data layer is also provided. Compressed downloadable files were created using the Windows program WINZIP v9.0. For those users who do not have software capable of uncompressing the archived zip files, they may obtain a free version of the software from Winzip Computing, Inc. or Pkware, Inc.